UK tops world chart for social media usage — Pew Research Center

The UK tops the world chart for social media usage, with more than half of the adult population accessing at least one social networking site, according to a global study from Pew Research Center.

The survey looked into the digital behaviour of 26,000 users from 21 countries in March and April 2012. It revealed that social media use is on the rise but Britons are the most social-networking nation, followed by the US and Russia, which share the second place, with 50% of the population using services offered by the likes of Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest, and the Czech Republic and Spain at 49%.

The fact that so many consumers use social networking sites in Britain is related to the fact that the vast majority of the population has access to the Internet at home; only 15% of UK respondents said they did not have Internet access. At the other end of the scale, there are countries like India and Pakistan, where nine in ten people have no online access, where the proportion of social media users came in at 6% and 3%, respectively. In countries with lower broadband penetration, however, users are more reliant on mobile devices for social media access.

Meanwhile, when asked which were the topics they most often shared their views about on social sites, almost half of UK consumers cited music and films, 36% said community issues, 35% admitted to sharing their opinion on sports, 30% posted about politics and 8% about religion.